


omnia

by songs



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, TRK spoilers, i'm ruined i hope i can spread the feels far and wide tbh, set between the final chapter and epilogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-04-30
Packaged: 2018-06-05 13:11:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6705694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songs/pseuds/songs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ronan closes the distance between them with two hurried steps. The next thing Adam knows, he’s being crushed to Ronan’s chest. It’s solid, anchoring, and Adam ducks his face into Ronan’s neck. From this close up, he can’t see the purple, fingerprint-bruises, winding down Ronan’s throat. But he kisses that space of skin, anyway. Kisses it, and feels Ronan’s breath hitch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	omnia

**Author's Note:**

> this contains MAJOR SPOILERS for the raven king! please do not read if you haven't read book four yet!

**1.**

 

They spend the night at St. Agnes, when everything is said and done.

 

It’s late evening, and reality is quite a dreamlike thing: Cabeswater is dead, but Gansey is not, although he had been, for the longest, briefest of moments. Adam thinks that he might’ve seen hell, today. The highest circle of it— beyond the trailer park, the double-wide. Gansey, lifeless. Ronan, unmade. Blue, red with blood. His hands, no longer his own. _Hell._

 

But it’s over, now.

 

Now, Ronan is driving silently. He’d just spoken to Matthew on the phone. He’s safe, alive. Breathing. Ronan’s hands, however, are shaking, trembling. With— hurt? Relief? Hours earlier, they had been coated with dream-bones and blood. _Aurora._ Adam aches to quell them, but he isn’t sure if he knows how to.

 

Orphan Girl is fast asleep in the backseat. The ride is mostly quiet, save for her heady breathing. Adam’s eyes do not leave Ronan’s hands: the chalk-white fingers, curled around the steering wheel, the palm so used to the shape of a fist, of a fight, even though Ronan would never show that side to Adam. Even when Adam’s own hands were at Ronan’s throat—

 

 _I’m sorry,_ Adam wants to say. But it will only upset Ronan. Because Adam is Adam is Adam: not a monster, not a sleeper, not Cabeswater. To Ronan, he’s only ever been Adam. And that has been enough.

 

Ronan takes up two parking spots in the St. Agnes lot and Adam doesn’t have the energy to chide him for it. Orphan Girl rustles, half-wakened from her dreaming; Ronan steps out of the BMW, before carrying her out like a doll, or a curl of flowers.

 

They wordlessly make their way up the creaky, church steps. Adam unlocks his apartment door and Ronan instantly sets down Orphan girl at the foot of the bed.

 

Adam is the first to speak. His voice is a rasp.

 

“I’m so glad,” he says.

 

Ronan shudders. “Me, too.”

 

“I’m so glad,” Adam goes on, both dry-eyed and a breath away from weeping. “That he’s still here. That you— that all of us. Are still— I’m so glad. I’m so glad.”

 

Ronan closes the distance between them with two hurried steps. The next thing Adam knows, he’s being crushed to Ronan’s chest. It’s solid, anchoring, and Adam ducks his face into Ronan’s neck. From this close up, he can’t see the purple, fingerprint-bruises, winding down Ronan’s throat. But he kisses that space of skin, anyway. Kisses it, and feels Ronan’s breath hitch.

 

“Let’s go to sleep,” Adam whispers. He doesn’t say, _let’s dream._ Doesn’t ask for anything more. Just, “Tomorrow will be a new day.”

 

 _We have all the days to come._ Ronan nods, once. Lets Adam lead him to the bed.

 

**2.**

 

Life is good. _Nice,_ normal. Adam Parrish goes to school, goes to work. He sees his friends often. Summertime is beckoning. The world seems smaller, and bigger, all at once.

 

Monmouth, however, feels a bit like a grave. Adam can’t bear the sight of Noah’s open, empty room. One day, after classes, the lot of them are hanging out on the floor, just outside of the boys’ bedrooms. Gansey is chewing on a mint-leaf and Blue is laying her head in his lap and Adam has his hand on Ronan’s knee, when Henry walks out from the bathroom, and gestures towards Noah’s door.

 

“Did someone used to sleep there?” he asks, and it’s innocent enough. Harmless, simply curious. But it makes the mood solemn, spectral. Blue’s eyes begin to water. Gansey’s expression is unreadable.

 

It’s Ronan, who finally says, “He never used to sleep, actually.” Adam lets out a sound somewhere between a croak and a laugh. “He was such a phantasmic little asshole. But Noah was— he was great.”

 

“Everything,” Blue adds in. “Noah was everything.”

 

Henry smiles, not out of understanding, but acceptance. He’s kind like that— in a way Adam never gave him the credit for.

 

His grip on Ronan tightens, almost imperceptibly. Ronan sighs gently, and Adam doesn’t ever want to let go.

 

**3.**

 

They’re at the Barns when Ronan finally says it. He’s kissing a wet pattern up Adam’s stomach, while Adam twists with yearning, with pleasure. Ronan’s mouth stops once he makes it to Adam’s chest. Adam makes a noise of protest. Ronan’s lips hover over the hummingbird rhythm of Adam’s heart.

 

“I,” he says, very quietly. “I don’t want to scare you off. But there’s something I’ve got to say.”

 

Adam groans. “Tell me. Don’t be a double tease, you jerk.”

 

Ronan laughs. His breath is hot on Adam’s skin, when he murmurs, “I love you.”

 

It’s been months since their first kiss, in this very place, under the weight of so many fears and burdens, yet under the guise of nothing but truth and want. _This is more than Cabeswater,_ the Adam of then had realized. _This is more than anything you’ve ever known. This is not a game. This is Ronan. This is everything._

Ronan, now, is flushed, hesitant. Like he’s wondering if he’d said something wrong. And Adam has spent the time between that very first kiss and this one in his own head, wandering, roaming, searching for answers like he’d searched for stones in Cabeswater, for strength in the eyes and hands he’d bartered, ages and ages ago.

 

 _But I never lost anything,_ Adam knows now. _They were always mine. My own choices. My own strengths. Ronan had dreamt a beautiful place. A place that would never hurt, or take from anyone._

_Even me._

“Ronan,” Adam says, sitting up slowly. Ronan shifts back, off of him. Adam already misses the touch. “You make it so hard for me to think,” he tells him, after a beat.

 

Ronan blinks. His eyelashes are as long and pointed as knives. “Oh?”

 

“You—” Adam has no idea what he’s doing. He just hopes he’s doing it right. “From the start. Me and you. It’s been all or nothing. I knew that going in. I knew it— watching you for so long. You watching me.” Adam blushes, which is completely silly, because he’s been shirtless this entire time but it’s _words_ that make him the most nervous. He’s never been too good with them. “I knew it. In the car. When— that day. When everything was being unmade— when _you—_ I just. I couldn’t bear it. Being without you. I don’t ever want nothing, when it comes to you. Y’know?”

 

Ronan’s expression is a raw mix of fear, hope, and longing. “Adam,” he says, almost tenderly. But there’s an inflection at the end, which gives it the usual Lynch, asshole-flair. “This isn’t a thesis statement. It’s just us.”

 

Adam exhales, his shoulders falling with relief. “I know,” he says. “But… this is important to me. It’s just us— but.” Suddenly it makes sense. “I love it. I love— you. So. There. Don’t be a brat.”

 

Here, Ronan beams. He’s smiling with all his teeth, and it’s not feral, or smirking. Just: pure, unburdened happiness. Adam wants to memorize that look on Ronan’s face. Even more than that, he wants to always put it there. He wants to always make Ronan happy.

 

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Ronan teases. Then he kisses him again.

 

**4.**

 

Orphan Girl is collecting stones, traipsing through the woods just beyond the Barns. Adam and Ronan watch on, from their spot by the plum-trees. They listen to her lovely, giggling voice. Then Adam says:

 

“She needs a name.”

 

Ronan leans back against the spine of the tree. He says, “I know.”

 

“She—” Adam swallows. “Having nothing. Knowing nothing. It’s scary. I see that in her. But she’s not afraid anymore. She’s awfully brave. And strong.”

 

“I know,” Ronan repeats.

 

“We should call her something strong,” Adam goes on. “Something good. She came from your mind. So of course, she’s—”

 

Adam stops there, before he can say the word _beautiful._

But Ronan seems to understand. He breathes in, then out. Stretches so his knee is touching Adam’s. He says, “When I first started calling her Orphan Girl, it was because it fit. She had nothing but the dream-forest. No one. Not even— me. I wasn’t even good for her.”

 

“Ronan—”

 

“But,” Ronan murmurs. “It’s such an awful fucking thing to brand someone with. _Orphan._ I created her with nothing. I did that. But now, I’m—” He doesn’t say _an orphan,_ yet Adam understands. “But I’m not alone. It was wrong of me to call her that. I want her to have a name, too.”

 

Adam nods, tilting closer. “You’re made of beautiful things, Ronan,” he says, and he means it.

 

Ronan flushes.

 

And then, as if on cue, Orphan Girl comes scurrying from the forest. She’s grinning from ear-to-ear, her dark eyes owlish and alight. She holds out her hands to them, showing off her newest finds.

 

Ronan says, “Oh.”

 

White, glimmering stones line the inside of her white, child-palms. There are gems of every size in her grasp. Adam doesn’t know if they’re dreamt, or real, but they’re lovely. She hands each of them a stone to keep.

 

Ronan says, “Thank you.”

 

And Adam breathes out: “Opal.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> SO TRK KILLED ME. MY GHOST WROTE THIS FROM THE GRAVE. CHILLING W NOAH. IM GONE


End file.
